


Writing Love

by Cbear2470



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Also I know why Poet AU's are so rare, But why are there almost no Dog Walker AU's?, Eros Katsuki Yuuri, Fluff and Humor, In a 2-for-1 special, Love, M/M, Oblivious Katsuki Yuuri, Romance, Secret Identity, Sort Of, come on people!, dog walker au, of rare AU's, poet AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 18:15:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16645334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cbear2470/pseuds/Cbear2470
Summary: Viktor Nikiforov is a poet (like, as a career). He's teaching a workshop about love. Yuuri Katsuki is a poet (he walks dogs to pay rent). He is taking a workshop about love. You'll never guess what happens.





	Writing Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there is this rule: 
> 
> If someone inserts a work of writing into a piece of fiction, and characters in that piece of fiction gush about how good that writing is, the writing is going to be not remotely as good as the characters are saying it is. 
> 
> It's a universal law.
> 
> So please, just suspend your disbelief and pretend the poem I spent all of half an hour writing for Yuuri is just _phenomenal_.

**_Week One – Introduction: On Love_ **

_Love is complicated. But it is love’s complication that drives us, moves us, builds us, and destroys us. Love is the thing that we are searching for, but it is also one of life’s greatest mysteries._

_For hundreds of years now, scholars still argue about whether Shakespeare’s infamous love poem, “[Sonnet 18](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45087/sonnet-18-shall-i-compare-thee-to-a-summers-day),” was in fact written for a man, and if addressed towards the [Fair Youth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wriothesley,_3rd_Earl_of_Southampton), whether this love was passionate and erotic or merely (?) platonic. The lines between different types of love seem mixed and blurred, most relationships existing within liminal spaces or no-man’s lands. Love is something that is inside us all, and we spend our entire lives trying to interpret the love we feel, and the love others feel towards us. _

_However, the idea of love not as a single idea, but something split—friendly, familiar, romantic, or divine—dates to ancient Greece. But as is often the case, our attempts to make sense of the world by categorizing it are often reductive._

_Over the next five weeks, we will investigate each type of love more deeply and examine the ways that we as humans make sense of love and the way love lends itself to both sentiment and subversion and is both bound and boundless. For this week, please share a poem of yours that you would identify as a love poem. Whether this love is the (seemingly?) traditional, romantic love like Anne Bradstreet’s “[To My Dear and Loving Husband](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43706/to-my-dear-and-loving-husband),” a meditation on affection like Craig Arnold’s “[Bird-Understander](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52207/bird-understander),” or is perhaps something more treacherous like the love in Anna Ahkmatova’s “[In the Evening](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/apr/24/poem-of-the-week-in-the-evening-by-anna-akhmatova),” is up to you._

****

“It’s dumb,” Yuri Plisetsky said, jabbing at the copy of Yuuri’s poem accusingly. “Complete garbage. And you’re a moron.”

Yuuri sat there frozen, not entirely sure what to do.

Yuuri _had_ been getting tired of getting the same criticism over and over again, but this was something else.

Throughout his college workshops, Yuuri had gotten the same feedback again and again.

_“This is just, wow!”_

_“I want to see more of this, if anything, make this poem longer!”_

_“I read this aloud to my roommate and my mom and my boss!”_

And maybe most people dreamed of being told repeatedly that they were talented, but Yuuri didn’t. Not anymore. It never seemed to mean anything, not really, at the end of the day. In the moment, the praise made him uncomfortable, and in the long term, it didn’t really seem to lead him to any real accomplishments.

So when Yuuri had graduated school and in a stroke of post-grad desperate-for-purpose motivation had signed up for a poetry workshop with a local group, he _had_ hoped to be taken down a peg. He _had_ hoped this time not to be the best writer in the room.

But he hadn’t imagined being cursed out by a teenager.

“Er, Yuri, we are of course looking for more constructive criticism,” Viktor Nikiforov said.

The second Viktor started to speak, Yuuri’s heart began pounding in his chest and his face felt very hot.

Because while Yuuri wanted, apparently more abstractly than in practice, for more thoughtful criticism, there was a slight exception when it came to the workshop teacher (and recent Ruth Lilly fellow among seemingly countless other awards and prestigious publications) Viktor Nikiforov.

He really, really wanted Viktor to like his poems.

When he’d found, entirely by chance, that the man that Yuuri had been a fan of for years was teaching a workshop out of his home in Brooklyn, Yuuri just about hyperventilated.

He almost couldn’t bring himself to sign up—tried to convince himself that it was too much money, that it was dangerous to meet your idols, etc. etc.—but then Yuuri did. He’d filled out the registration form and hovered his mouse over the submit button before finally clicking it with his eyes squeezed shut.

It was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

Yuuri now though imagined that there were probably better things he could have spent the $350 on. Like probably rent. Or a new backpack.

“I do agree with you that it’s flawed,” Viktor continued and Yuuri thought he might vomit. “But it would perhaps be more helpful to Yuuri if you could point out specifically what is holding this poem back.”

Yuri groaned in frustration.

“It’s like—you start the poem and it’s fine, and then you get to the middle and it’s phenomenal. ‘The smell of sleep’ is so good and universally tangible it almost feels like it should be cliché, but it isn’t. But then the end, it’s like you’re trying too hard and it’s dumb because who the fuck gives anyone the right to bury a poem like this?”

Viktor nodded and made a humming noise and Yuuri sat very still. That criticism almost seemed like praise except— if Yuri wanted to talk about _burying_ _something,_ he should look at his own words just now if that was the case.

 “You’re right,” Viktor said, nodding pensively, apparently unaware that Yuuri was currently having a heart attack. “You also have a meter running through the beginning of the poem—it’s not too heavy handed but it gives the poem a bit of a heartbeat, but then you lose it in the last few lines, but there is no discernable reason for it to disappear.”

“I—” Yuuri stammered. “I couldn’t get it right. I thought it was close—no one usually ever notices my meter anyway.”

Viktor gasped and Yuuri’s eyes widened comically.

“Yuuri! Don’t look down on your readers like that—it’s a huge disservice to your art and a discredit to them.”

_What. His art?_

Yuuri wasn’t quite sure that what he made was _art_. Calling his writing art was probably a disservice to _actual art_. What Yuuri did was more like just turning his feelings into word soup.

“Oh,” was all Yuuri could say, “Right. Okay.”

“This poem is so close to being pretty great, Yuuri,” a young man who’d introduced himself as Leo put in gently, offering Yuuri a smile. “I bet just one or two more revisions and it will get there.”

Yuuri tried to smile back, but he knew it looked pained.

“Yes, please share with us a future draft!” Viktor said. “Now should we go clockwise round the circle then? That means, Mila, you’re next. Do you have copies for us?”

Mila nodded and passed Yuuri a printed version of her poem, and Yuuri, sinking down into Viktor’s sofa, tried his damnedest to hide his entire self behind it, hoping the hot blush of shame he could feel on his cheeks would soon subside.

****

“Honey, I’m home!” Phichit called as he entered his and Yuuri’s apartment.

Yuuri didn’t respond, but Phichit could hear Yuuri murmuring on the other side of the bookshelf that was the makeshift wall of his bedroom.

“Yuuri?” Phichit asked, stepping through the kitchen and making his way into the nook of Yuuri’s converted living room bedroom.

He found Yuuri sitting on his mattress on the floor surrounded by paper.

Yuuri, who had been staring down intently at a handwritten draft and reading it aloud to himself, looked up.

“Oh, hi,” Yuuri said. “How was—” Yuuri’s brow furrowed as he tried to remember Phichit’s schedule.

“Work,” Phichit supplied.

“Right,” Yuuri said, still seeming distracted.

“Working on a new poem?” Phichit asked.

“No, fixing this stupid one.”

“What stupid one?” Phichit said, braving to disturb Yuuri’s paper storm to push aside a discarded pile of drafts to sit down next to Yuuri on his bed. “I don’t think you ever write stupid poems, by the way.”

“I mean the dream one,” Yuuri clarified with a sigh. “I don’t know why I keep trying to write dream poems—they never stay dreams. Oh—” Yuuri said, and Phichit watched over his shoulder as he scribbled what he’d just said down.

If Phichit didn’t know Yuuri very well, that was the kind of thing that someone could have identified as arrogant or just a little obnoxious—saying something off hand in passing and then deciding it was important and good enough to save.

But then that kind of take didn’t take into account that Yuuri didn’t seem to think anything he wrote was good, not really.

“How did your workshop go?” Phichit asked. “Is Viktor in love with you yet?” he teased bumping against Yuuri’s shoulder. Yuuri, however, was stiff. “What?”

“It doesn’t work like that, and I’m not expecting this time will be any different,” Yuuri murmured, setting down the pad of paper he’d been writing on and slumping back against the wall. “It’s the kind of thing that should never have left my mind.”

Phichit sighed.

He knew that Yuuri had this idea once, or well, perhaps _frustration_ was a better word, in his writing. Yuuri was talented, incredibly so—it was almost absurd. But he very rarely put himself out there. For a long time, Yuuri had once confessed, he had hoped that his words would be enough—that if they were really good enough, then he’d be successful. That the line between work and author would blur and things around him would shift. Instead of being Yuuri Katsuki, merely coincidently the writer of pretty spectacular poems, he’d become Yuuri Katsuki, brilliant and beloved poet.

But since graduating college, Phichit had watched as Yuuri had become increasingly jaded and disenchanted with the concept of being a poet.

And Phichit more and more now thought that to Yuuri, the idea of being a poet was becoming more and more a comforting fantasy than something that he was really going to keep pursuing.

He’d hoped when Yuuri had signed up for a workshop, it would re-invigorate him.

And, secretly, he’d hoped that the poet who was teaching the workshop, the one and only Viktor Nikiforov, who Yuuri coincidently adored, would somehow manage to not only love Yuuri’s poetry, but translate a love of Yuuri’s poetry into a love of Yuuri.

Yuuri could use a mentor, at least. (If not maybe a boyfriend.)

But of course Yuuri was right, it was far fetched for such a thing to happen outside of a novel.

And Yuuri wrote poetry, not novels.

“It was only the first week,” Phichit said optimistically. “You’ve got four more, right?”

“Yes,” Yuuri said, but clearly, he already felt defeated. “I was stupid and didn’t work hard enough, though. There are only five sessions, and I _wasted_ one.”

Phichit sighed and patted Yuuri’s knee.

“Yuuri, you work harder on your poetry than I’ve ever seen anyone work on anything.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, you’re right, I’m just talentless.”

“Yuuri,” Phichit chided. “You are an award-winning poet.”

“That was a class prize I got at graduation,” Yuuri protested. “There were only a few dozen other creative writing students, it’s not exactly a big competition, nor a very important prize. I can’t even remember the name of it.”

Phichit opened his mouth but then shut it again.

Yuuri picked back up his draft and stared down at it again, pencil primed.

“Will you go to sleep soon?” Phichit asked instead.

Yuuri nodded absent mindedly, and Phichit knew he wouldn’t.

****

They never stay dreams

 

There is a cry in the evening,

of waking

from dreaming,

of hellscapes, I escape

to your skin on my chest.

 

The smell of sleep in my nostrils,

essential,

and gentle,

has been wholly replaced

by the smell of your hair.

 

I could get lost in your shoulders,

trace whole curves,

grow bolder—

dip straight down your spine to

the small of your back.

 

It’s in the darkness, I leave you,

unnoticed,

but I know

it’s kinder for nightmares

if they see themselves out.

****

It was a little before one in the morning when Yuuri finally finished the next draft of the poem. He yawned wide, his eyes watering with exhaustion, as he tracked down the email thread for the class. Viktor had sent the workshop prompt for the first week and had encouraged everyone to feel free to submit copies of the weeks submissions for everyone to review before class, as well revisions or anything they don’t have time to get to in class after class, to form one big thread for each week.

No one else had submitted a revision yet, but Yuuri couldn’t blame them. Other people probably went home to significant others or had social engagements or chores to do on a Sunday night. They probably didn’t bury themselves in a mountain of paper and sit there for hours chanting their poems quietly aloud to themselves again and again until every last sound was perfect.

They probably weren’t obsessives about it and could write better poetry than him without it nearly drowning them. They probably didn’t have to sit with a poem for hours, chanting it aloud to themselves like the prayers of a dying man until every single sound and word was perfect.

Yuuri considered maybe waiting to send the revision until later in the week, so as not to make himself look quite so desperate, but he knew that he had to do it now. If he waited, he’d probably just continue to obsess, reading through again and again—not even really revising anymore, just reading it, occasionally changing out words and then changing them back.

Or even worse, he’d somehow talk himself out of even sending it at all.

So he sent it, it was a pretty major revision, but a short poem. Maybe they’d think he’d just kind of casually rearranged things a bit in like twenty minutes after the workshop. Maybe they’d think it was just a quick little revision while everyone’s comments were still fresh in his mind.

So, Yuuri found the last email in the thread and attached the file without much commentary, before hitting send.

Then he shut his laptop and flopped back on the bed, discarded drafts crinkling under him.

****

Yuuri woke up the next morning to a text.

_Hey, could you cover for me this week? I had a family emergency and had to fly out to California last night._

_Probably, how many dogs is it?_ Yuuri responded, pragmatically. Then, remembering to be a decent human being, added, _Hope everything is alright!_

 _Thanks!_ Kenjirou wrote back. _I’ve only actually got one dog right now, it’s more of a dog-sitting situation, and just on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday afternoons. I checked with the owner though and he says it’s fine if you cover. I’ll Venmo you the money. If you could just do your regular route this morning and then go over and hang out at this guy’s house for a couple hours—just a walk, some play time, and dinner before you leave. Otherwise you can just like, sit on the couch with her for like an hour, do whatever._

 _Okay, that sounds doable,_ Yuuri replied _._ It’s not like Yuuri had any afternoon plans, and he could certainly use the money. A couple hours of dog-sitting had to be like an extra $30 a day, at least.

Yuuri desperately needed to find what one might call A Real Job. The kind that was full time. Maybe even salaried with benefits. But real jobs were hard and stressful to find and Yuuri didn’t feel qualified for any of them, so instead, he was a dog walker.

It was kind of a dream job, in a sense—flexible hours and getting to spend all day with dogs. But it was also in all technicality barely more than a part-time job. Yuuri’s rent was sort of a steal for New York—Phichit’s parents were paying the rent on a one-bedroom apartment for him while he was still in school, and so Yuuri payed less than half for the right to basically camp out in the living room. But still, he was throwing most of his income at rent. Definitely not the recommended 30 percent.

But an extra hundred bucks this week to hang out with another dog meant maybe Yuuri could buy a new backpack. His current one was tattered, and an entire compartment was no longer accessible because the zipper was permanently stuck.

 _Great (_ _つ_ _✧ω_ _✧)_ _つ_ _the lockbox for the key is on the gate, the code is 2512. I’ll send you the address in a sec, let me look it up._

Yuuri tossed down the phone, figuring he’d map out the location after he finished his route this morning, and with a deep breath, lugged himself out of bed.

****

Yuuri stood in front of the apartment, gaping down at the address Kenjirou had sent him and then back up at the brownstone apartment.

He’d just about finished his dog walking route by early afternoon. After the last dog had been dropped back off at home, Yuuri had went back to his text conversation with Kenjirou to find the pinned location that he’d sent him with the address of the dog Yuuri was to take care of. He hadn't thought much of it, besides, “ _Of course Kenjirou wouldn’t send me a written address like it was last millennia.”_ Then with only a few taps, he'd set it up for him to be given directions there from his current location and was off to a nearby bus stop

But then, about twenty minutes later, as he had gotten off the bus and made his way towards the apartment, Yuuri had been pleasantly surprised to realize he was in Viktor’s neighborhood. At the reminder of the unfairly attractive poet, Yuuri had allowed himself exactly five minutes of ridiculous fantasy as he walked along the sidewalk.

He'd imagined that maybe he’d run into Viktor on the street. Maybe Viktor was one of those people that would write in a nearby park or coffee shop and really got to know their neighborhood. He bet Viktor wasn’t like him, holing up in his apartment besides work and when Phichit occasionally dragged him out.

That would be a fun kind of meet cute, maybe, wouldn’t it? And maybe Viktor would ask him over for a cup of tea. Or maybe they’d just chat for a very long minute, but then Yuuri would find Viktor standing on the same street corner at the same time the next day when he came back to walk the dog again.

And now Yuuri knew obviously, incredibly obviously, there was not a universe in which he’d actually end up in any kind of vaguely romantic situation with the incredibly gorgeous, incredibly talented Viktor Nikiforov.

A man doesn’t decide to teach a workshop on love without some experience, far more than Yuuri had inevitably, with love.

But it _was_ nice to fantasize to kill some time.

But then as he had turned down Viktor’s street, and his heart rate sped up a bit as he'd navigated himself via the little blue dot that tracked his location on the map on his phone, closer to the pinned location Kenjirou had shared.

Maybe he’d be taking care of a neighbors dog. Maybe Viktor would pop by for a cup of sugar and Yuuri would answer the door. Yuuri wasn’t sure if neighbors actually popped by to borrow cups of sugar anymore, but maybe Viktor did. Maybe there was a Russian custom that obligates a person to ask their neighbors for sugar every Monday afternoon at 2:30 PM.

But then, when Yuuri had found himself not just in Viktor’s neighborhood, nor on Viktor’s street, but standing in front of Viktor’s apartment, Yuuri finally went and figured out how to look at the written address.

And he realized once he saw it written out, that he recognized it. He’d been there last night.

He checked the number on the screen to the number above the door a few more times, looking back and forth between the two.

Yup. He was definitely at the right place.

And it wasn’t Viktor’s neighbor, same apartment number, 217B. Same flowerboxes in the window. Same scraggly shrubs and little metal frog statues in the tiny front garden.

But the thing was, last night, Viktor didn’t have a dog.

Trust, if Yuuri had known he’d had a dog, the fantasy of Kenjirou asking him by coincidence to walk Viktor’s dog would have occurred to him much earlier. But all of yesterday afternoon there had been no dog. He’d sat in Viktor’s living room for three hours and there hadn’t even been a yip.

He mentioned a roommate, though. Maybe the roommate had a dog. The kind of tiny thing that often got stuck into a bag and trekked out into the city and maybe just wasn’t home yesterday afternoon.

But, the only thing Yuuri could do, he supposed, was go inside and find out.

Yuuri went over to the gate to find the little lockbox and put in the code to dig out the key. Then he walked up the steps and unlocked the door.

Viktor’s apartment was on the second floor, so Yuuri headed up the stairs.

Then Yuuri opened the door and was immediately almost bowled over by a pile of fluff.

Not a purse sized dog, then.

Yuuri quickly pushed forward into the apartment, causing the standard poodles paws to fall from his chest and for the dog to instead start eagerly circling around his feet.

Yuuri couldn’t help but smile. He was fond of poodles.  

“Hello,” Yuuri said, bending down to scratch behind the dogs ears once the apartment door was safely shut behind him. “You must be Makkachin.”

The dog licked his cheek.

“But now, how do you say your name—is it Makka-chin, Makka-kin, or Makka-shin? I’m sorry, I’ve only seen it written out, and your owner seems pretty creative, because when I googled it, nothing came up.”

Of course, if this dogs owner was Viktor Nikiforov, and not the mysterious roommate of Viktor Nikiforov, it was obvious that of course his dog would have a creative name.

“Bark once, for the first; twice for the second; and three times for the third,” Yuuri offered.

Makkachin just stared at him, her tail thumping on the ground.

“Okay, fine then, don’t be helpful,” Yuuri teased. “How about I just call you Makka, then?”

Makka sneezed.

“Great, I’m Yuuri. So do you want to go for your walk first?”

Makka jumped back up again at this, sneezing straight into Yuuri’s face before actually knocking the squatting Yuuri over.

“Okay, okay!” Yuuri cried, trying to push the excited poodle off of him. “Let me find your leash!” he laughed as he fought his way back up from the ground and grabbed the leash from the hook by the door.

****

Yuuri sat on Viktor’s couch with Makka, the poodle’s head in his lap. He’d tried his hardest to purposefully not snoop around the apartment, and instead was doing what Kenjirou had told him he could do—i.e. sit on the couch and do whatever.

So Yuuri was sitting on the couch, a bit too carefully, jumping through different apps on his phone, doing nothing particularly worth mentioning.

Then his phone vibrated with a notification and Yuuri found that it was an email.

And email from Viktor Nikiforov.

Yuuri jumped up from the couch like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be, and Makka whimpered at the sudden disruption.

He stared at the email for a few seconds more, just looking at the subject line and preview of the message as it sat in his inbox.

**_Week One – An Introduction_ **

_Hello Yuuri, This is an exciting revision…_

Yuuri froze and suddenly felt a little nauseated.

Exciting was good right? But then, “exciting revision” also sounded like something that someone would say when they were trying to find something nice to say about something that they thought was incredibly mediocre. It meant, “Good try, kind of promising, but not there yet.”

Yuuri clicked off the phone and sat back down on the edge of the sofa, taking a few steadying breaths.

Then, he clicked back on his phone and went in to open the email.

_Hello Yuuri,_

_This is an exciting revision. It is rare to see a poem so quickly and completely transformed, and in such a knock out way. Can I ask you though, do you still think this is a love poem?_

_VN_

Oh no. Oh dear.

Makka whined as Yuuri deflated back into the sofa and suddenly found himself fighting the urge to cry. _Do you still think this is a love poem?_ Like Yuuri had just forgotten the entire topic of the class. Like his poem was so bad, Viktor couldn’t even tell what it was about on the most basic level.

At least Viktor had responded just to him, instead of replying all and shaming Yuuri in front of the entire workshop.

Suddenly and without giving it much thought besides trying to minimize as much shame as he could as quickly as possible, Yuuri found himself composing a response.

_Hi Viktor,_

_I think maybe if I have to explain the poem, it’s probably not really working. Thank you for taking the time to read the revision—I’ll take another shot at it._

_My best,_

_Yuuri_

Yuuri sent the message quickly and then clicked off his phone again.

He was absolutely not going to take another shot at that poem. He was going to go home and burn every last draft, delete every last copy, and then hide under his duvet until the end of time.

Makka crawled into Yuuri’s lap, her too-big-to-be-a-lap-dog frame draped across Yuuri’s body.

“Thanks, Makka,” he whispered, reaching out to scratch the back of her neck.

For a few minutes, they stayed like that.

Then, Yuuri’s phone vibrated again.

And Yuuri couldn’t help himself.

It was another email.

_Ah, no, forgive me—I should have given more feedback straight off the bat!_

_The poem is lovely, and you evoke a lot of imagery with very few words. I also like the ambiguity of the word choice in the last two lines—I hope it was intentional and not an accident of trying to force the meter, but even if it was an accident, you should take credit! It’s a real gut punch, much better than the previous draft._

_The ending seems like it’s supposed to mean that the nightmare would be being kind by leaving, and that’s how I think most readers will understand it within the context after a first read, but the phrasing “It’s kinder for nightmares” does kind of directly mean that it is kinder_ for _the_ nightmare _. Which is a fascinating implication that really adds a layer to the poem._

_I was just asking, maybe a bit selfishly, as to what kind of personal philosophy has led you to believe this is love? Maybe it is in a “If you love something, let it go, kind of sense,” but at the same time… I guess I just wanted to know if you really think this is love or if the revision shifted into something maybe not love—which is of course fine. Of course you don’t have to explain your poem though, it really does say a lot, and I think it’s very close to being finished—maybe just some tweaking if you sit with it a bit longer._

_Happy to read any other revisions of this or any other poem in the future!_

Oh.

_Oh._

Oh?

So Viktor didn’t think his poem was terrible. He thought it was good.

He just thought Yuuri had a messed-up idea of what love was and was attacking his view of the world and everything he knew.

Yuuri had also not intended the double meaning of the last two lines, but now that Viktor had pointed it out to him, it only made the other comments seem to cut deeper, somehow.

If Yuuri was supposed to be the nightmare, anyway.

Someone had told him once to be careful about writing fiction that is too autobiographical to be workshopped, because readers will rip into your lived experience and not even realize it, tear apart everything you thought you knew, and psychoanalyze your life—and you’ll be shamed into sitting there and pretending the story is just a story, and not everything you know and love.

He’d thought though poetry protected him from that.

Particularly when he’d written most of the poem to capture a scene that was so unfamiliar to him. He’d never gotten close enough to someone to sleep with them before walking out.

No, Yuuri was pretty good at leaving someone’s life way before then. Or, perhaps, never even entering their life at all.

 _But well, at least Viktor liked the poem_ , Yuuri tried to tell himself.

Makka whined a nosed Yuuri’s cheek.

Yuuri, feeling defeated this time and only really trying to book end the crises that he’d inevitably continue to have for years to come, replied.

_Oh, thanks for the feedback. I think I’ve spent too much time with it, to be honest, but I think maybe some space before coming back to it again might help!_

_I don’t think this is a love poem in a kind of happily-ever-after sense, obviously. But you said it could be a love poem like the Akmatova poem—and we’re supposed be learning that love can be all kinds of ways, right?_

_See you on Sunday._

As he wrote the last line, he realized how strange it was, to be talking to Viktor while he was in Viktor’s apartment and Viktor was not.

He could stay here, for a few more hours probably, and _see you on Sunday_ could become _see you tonight_.

But obviously Yuuri was not going to do that, Yuuri knew without even really having to think it, as he stood up from the couch and headed into the kitchen to begin prepping Makka’s dinner before he left.

His phone vibrated one more time.

_Looking forward to it! There is so much I hope to teach you about love!_

And that for whatever reason was the moment he realized that Viktor Nikiforov must not, officially, ever know that Yuuri was his substitute dog-sitter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I actually started writing this fic like months and months ago, but then I left it because while usually I love how far removed Yuri on Ice is from my real life (i.e. excellent escapism), this was hitting too close to home. But I've had the space now to get over myself and now this fic is only incredibly loosely autobiographical, as it should be. (Mostly because I did not in fact get the poet I thought I was in love with by the end of the workshop. And also, retrospectively, probably was not in love with them at all. Which is perhaps a story, but not, most likely, one for Yuuri and Viktor.)


End file.
